Nathan J. Fullmer, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Luke Kelly, August 11, 2001: Saving the legacy tape no. 282

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athan J. Fullmer mall but a high rise. It was sitting on th hill. nd headquarters with the platoon leader th lieut nant and a tl t 0 th My squad-it was like a beer tavern. It was down on a nic ra th along the bank of the Rhine. It had been used by Germans for that purpo . nt . ri ht bunks in it, straw ticks. It was dry. One of the squads was on a flat bottom boat that had been grounded, and they had nice facilities there. I mean it wasn't floating. It was that facility where I spent my 20th birthday, March 24th 1945. I was a little shocked to find out the guys in the squad had a pot going as to whether I would make it to 20. And if the pot was big enough, you know, they might have taken it into their own hands. There was some gunfire. Everybody on the West Bank thought that it was their duty to shoot at anything that was floating down that river. We were upstream of the bridge, and if you'd see a speck out there, why, that's a German frogman going down trying to blow up the bridge, you know-anywhere from .45 caliber pistols to the M-1 's. I don't think they turned any machine guns on it, or antitank guns. But that was a little hard on the troops on the East bank because those bullets would ricochet off the water. We finally were told to quit shooting. But morning and night, just at dawn and just at dusk, one German plane would make a pass at that bridge. And the antiaircraft guns up and down the river just-you know, they never did get him, but he never got the bridge either. They got so much in the way of armor and supplies and trucks going across that that old railroad bridge collapsed. But by this time the engineers had put two steel 15